Running a Space Engineers Dedicated Server on Linux via Wine (with the Segoe UI font crash fix)

se-ds-linux-wine.md

Running a Space Engineers Dedicated Server on Linux via Wine

A working setup for running the Space Engineers Dedicated Server (SEDS) on Linux under Wine. The main gotcha is that the server's configurator GUI requires the Segoe UI font, which doesn't exist in a stock Wine prefix — so it crashes on launch with a misleading error. This guide includes the fix.

Tested on Linux with Wine (default ~/.wine prefix), App Version 01_209_024.

Prerequisites

• wine (64-bit, with WoW64)
• winetricks
• A Steam install of SteamCMD (steamcmd.exe) in your working directory

Install

install_se_ded.sh:

winetricks vcrun2013 vcrun2017 dotnet48 corefonts
winecfg /v win11

# The DS configurator GUI requires the "Segoe UI" font, which isn't in a stock
# Wine prefix. corefonts (above) provides Arial; map Segoe UI -> Arial so the
# GUI launches instead of crashing with "Font 'Segoe UI' cannot be found."
wine reg add 'HKCU\Software\Wine\Fonts\Replacements' /v 'Segoe UI' /t REG_SZ /d 'Arial' /f

wine steamcmd.exe +force_install_dir se_game +login anonymous +app_update 298740 +quit

Run

run_se_ded.sh:

wine se_game/DedicatedServer64/SpaceEngineersDedicated.exe

With no arguments this opens the WinForms configurator GUI where you set up your world and config.

The Segoe UI crash (and why the error is misleading)

If you skip the font fix, the server crashes ~0.5 seconds after launch. The console shows only this, which is a red herring:

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at Sandbox.MyInitializer.OnCrash(...)

That's the crash reporter itself throwing — it masks the real exception. The actual cause is in the launcher log at:

~/.wine/drive_c/users/<you>/AppData/Roaming/SpaceEngineersDedicated/SpaceEngineersDSGUI_*.log

which shows:

System.ArgumentException: Font 'Segoe UI' cannot be found.
   at System.Drawing.FontFamily.CreateFontFamily(...)
   at VRage.Dedicated.Configurator.PluginManagementControl..ctor()
   at VRage.Dedicated.ConfigForm..ctor(...)

Fix

# Provides Arial (and other MS core fonts). NOTE: corefonts does NOT include Tahoma.
winetricks corefonts

# Map "Segoe UI" -> "Arial" so the configurator GUI can render.
wine reg add 'HKCU\Software\Wine\Fonts\Replacements' /v 'Segoe UI' /t REG_SZ /d 'Arial' /f

winetricks segoeui is not a valid verb — there's no Segoe UI package, which is why the registry replacement approach is used instead.

Notes / troubleshooting

• Don't look in ./logs/ for crash info — those are SteamCMD's install/download logs. The game/launcher log lives under the Wine prefix's AppData/Roaming/SpaceEngineersDedicated/ (see path above). A Minidump.dmp is written there on crash too.
• Headless servers: the -console flag skips the WinForms configurator entirely, which avoids the font dependency — but it needs a world/config already set up (the GUI normally creates that). Easiest path: fix the font, configure your world once through the GUI, then switch to console mode.
• Custom prefix: if you don't use the default ~/.wine, set WINEPREFIX for every wine / winetricks command so the font replacement lands in the right place.